Chapter 476 - 304: Are We Playing the Same Game? (2)

Chapter 476: Chapter 304: Are We Playing the Same Game? (2)

What was even more upsetting was that in the corner of this content, there was always a link. Clicking on it revealed the real news sources for these events.

You could see where in the world these genuine tragedies had taken place.

Despite the severe shortage of supplies over the past few days, Uffie had managed to pull her characters through.

Even her colleagues, who were watching over her shoulder, had to admit that she was playing quite well, especially for her first time.

The few others who had started playing around the same time had already had their entire groups wiped out.

Only Uffie was left, still struggling onward.

But the situation wasn’t looking optimistic.

Uffie took control of the deserter, Romance, and went to a new map, hoping to scavenge something good.

But what greeted her was a Scorching Beam.

Uffie instinctively counter-attacked. Though supplies were scarce, she did have a Magic Staff that stored Magic, allowing her to strike back from a distance.

She killed the enemy attacking her in just two hits.

But when she went to check, she discovered her opponent wasn’t a soldier or a bandit, but just a panicked young man trying to protect his home.

He was a civilian.

There was a woman in the house, too. She screamed in terror, begging Uffie not to kill her, and fled into the night.

Uffie figured the woman who’d fled probably wouldn’t survive, ’but that’s not my problem anymore.’

She had initially wanted to reload her save; this was the first civilian she’d killed.

But after a moment’s thought, she decided against it.

’He attacked me first. I was just defending myself. This doesn’t count as robbing them.’

’Besides, I really need these supplies...’

The deserter, Romance, returned to the shelter with ample supplies. It would take several trips to haul everything back, but now they wouldn’t have to worry about food and water for a few days.

However, upon learning that a civilian had been killed, the journalist’s mood completely collapsed into a state of breakdown.

She couldn’t bear living like this any longer.

Perhaps it couldn’t even be called "living"—it was merely a struggle for survival.

Uffie didn’t even have time to raise the journalist’s spirits before the character who had accompanied her for days chose to take her own life.

The worst possible ending.

The ending photo didn’t show anything bloody; the journalist had hanged herself.

But the image was exceptionally chilling.

It didn’t show the journalist’s face, only her two feet, slightly off the ground and silhouetted against the light.

The caption below the photo was also simple.

[Kadia was already dead when she was found. She no longer had to endure this life, so she ended it.]

Uffie sighed helplessly. There was nothing she could do.

’Perhaps for Kadia, a choice like this wasn’t so bad after all.’

One character was gone, but the game didn’t stop.

Either everyone died, or they survived for forty days. The others had to continue their struggle.

Having lost the character who was skilled at bartering with traders, life in the shelter went from bad to worse.

Romance’s mood was also poor, so Uffie had him drink a lot of moonshine. Unexpectedly, a drunken Romance got into a fight with the athlete that night and injured him.

The situation deteriorated rapidly.

The cook chose to leave the shelter to find his friend.

The cook only seemed cold-blooded on the surface; his mood didn’t drop much even after the killing of a civilian.

In reality, he cared deeply for his friend, mentioning him repeatedly in his journal entries.

Perhaps, for him, there was nothing left in the shelter worth holding onto. It was better to take a chance and go look for his friend.

But how easy could it be to survive alone out in a warzone?

The cook soon met his own end.

[One night, Bruno left the shelter. He wanted to find his friend, but was shot while trying to cross a military checkpoint.]

Another terse description.

The injured athlete didn’t survive the final winter.

[Tragically, Pavle died. Will his family return to mourn him? Perhaps that would only make them remember all of this, which would be too painful...]

Another bad ending.

Only Romance remained.

But thanks to the remaining supplies and Romance’s own formidable combat skills, Uffie managed to make it to the morning of the fortieth day.

"The war is over..."

The "Game Cleared" message appeared on the screen.

Uffie, however, felt no joy. She only felt that she had, at last, endured to the very end.

She wasn’t even sure if this could be considered "winning," given how tragically her characters’ stories had played out.

And after the fortieth day, the game presented the ending for the shelter’s sole survivor: Romance.

[Romance survived the war, but traumatized by his experiences, he began using an Alchemist’s addictive potions and died of an overdose a few years later.]

"..."

Uffie was about to lose it.

The only one who survived ended up dead a few years later anyway.

And in such a pathetic way.

A potion overdose...

A man who had survived such hardship chose to end his life in a drug-induced haze.

Of the four characters, not a single one met a good end.

But Uffie didn’t feel too defeated. She felt like she had been so close—just a little bit more, and she could have gotten them all through the war.

Now, she wanted to start the next round immediately.

The game This War of Mine wasn’t exactly a roguelike, but it had similar elements.

Each new game came with new random events, different characters to use, and a distinct experience.

Through its relatively short playthroughs and by giving the player the feeling they were *just shy* of success, it lessened the frustration of failure and, out of a sheer refusal to accept defeat, made them desperate to try again.

For the new round, Uffie chose the same characters.

With the experience from her last attempt, her situation was much improved.

She never went back to the "Quiet House"—a place she never wanted to set foot in again.

She scavenged supplies more efficiently, always keeping a small stockpile to handle random requests for help.

Uffie was completely engrossed in the game, oblivious to the passage of time.

「Several hours later.」

It seemed she had done nothing all day except play This War of Mine.

"They all survived!"

Uffie couldn’t help but cheer. ℯ

All four characters had survived the forty days, though their conditions weren’t the best.

It was still a huge improvement over her first attempt.

Uffie carefully read through each of their endings.

It probably couldn’t be called a "good" ending; they hadn’t achieved their dreams after the war ended.

But it wasn’t bad, either. At least it wasn’t like Romance’s ending last time, where he survived the war only to get himself killed later.

’What a great game,’ Uffie thought with heartfelt admiration.

It perfectly expressed its anti-war theme; she certainly didn’t want anything to do with war now.

And it also ensured plenty of replayability.

Despite its grim and brutal setting, and even though playing it was oppressive, the game was still full of engaging mechanics. Plus, getting the characters to survive for forty days was incredibly satisfying.

It also had depth for repeat playthroughs.

You could try different character combinations, and with the character creator, you could play for a long, long time.

For an indie game, it was an incredible value.

Then she compared it to her own entry for the upcoming game festival.

"Ah!"

Uffie groaned, running her hands through her hair in frustration.

It was true what they said: comparisons are odious. She had been quite satisfied with her own game. It had some minor issues, but she’d felt it was a good game overall.

But after playing Zog’s demo, she felt like her own work was riddled with problems and wasn’t even good on a fundamental level.

’Whatever, I’ll stop thinking about this for now.’

She was going to show off her "glorious achievement" of keeping all four characters alive to her colleagues!

But where had her audience of colleagues gone?

Uffie glanced around.

’Did they get tired of watching?’

Then she realized they had simply moved to watch something else.

Anything was more interesting than actually working, it seemed.

Her colleagues were even letting out periodic gasps of surprise.

’What’s going on?’

Curious, Uffie squeezed her way over to see.

After finally managing to find a spot to see, she was surprised to find Toto was the one playing.

’She’s here to test the game, too?’

’But does Toto even have an advantage in this kind of game?’

As far as Uffie knew, Toto’s strengths had always been her mechanical skill and lightning-fast reflexes.

This game, however, required neither of those things.

’I wonder how she’s doing...’

The moment Uffie looked at the screen, she gasped. "Huh?"

She thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. All those rows of vegetables and canned goods, the columns of medicine and weapons—where did all that come from?